The LOMO’s ability to shoot for as long as two minutes can be as much of a curse as a blessing.
The LOMOgraphy movement has made a virtue out of what some would deem a limitation. The LC-A’s design left out one feature later rectified in LOMOgraphy’s L-CA+: a cable release thread. This means it’s very hard to take a shake-free long exposure. You need a sturdy support and a very steady finger.
Many LOMOgraphers learned to embrace the shaky, blurred aesthetic – producing snaking light trails a world away from pin-sharp long exposures. When the new and improved LOMO LC-A+ came out in 2005, its threaded shutter meant LOMOs could (theoretically at least) produce shake-free photos, though I’ve seen very few LOMOgraphers shoot this way – I guess people are more used to using an SLR for this kind of stuff.
This pic was taken back in 2003, after a night out in Shepherd’s Bush in West London, here on the Hammersmith & City Line, the world-famous Tube is above ground. Lit from the platform lights, there’s usually enough light to take a handheld shot with fast film.
But fast film isn’t what I had that night – all I had was 100-ISO colour print film. I waited as a Tube train rumbled past by the other platform, clicked and hoped for the best.
It’s a shot that’s likely to grace a London Underground poster anytime soon, but the swirling lights Impressionistic lights remind me of a thousand London nights spent waiting on a late-night platform for a Tube train after a few pints. Not everything is always in clear focus.
I'm a New Zealander who has been living in London since the mid-1990s, shooting film seriously since the year 2000. Kosmo Foto was launched in 2012 and has since become a film brand, with the release of my first films Kosmo Foto Mono 35mm (2017) and Kosmo Foto Mono 120 (2019).
I’m doing everything I can to promote film photography in the 21st Century, and help it survive and thrive. If you want to write something for Kosmo Foto, please drop me a line at foto.dowling@gmail.com.
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